Hey All, seeing some questions around the recent change to how we are going to be awarding the Overachiever sails.

We've heard your feedback that players were frustrated that we didn't communicate our plans for this upfront and allow them to push on and complete the achievements prior to the rebalance. With that in mind we've decided to loosen the criteria for who is eligible for these Overachiever sails and give players a small window now to earn them.

Players that complete ANY of the newly rebalanced achievements in their new unlock criteria by the 14th December will earn the Overachiever sails. (Any player who was close to completing the original unlock criteria will only have to hand in 1 item to tick them over and unlock the achievement).

We feel this is the right step to inform players of our plans and give you the opportunity to unlock these unique sails.

I am very interested in these sails, however I'm not sure what achievements/commendations are being referred to for the Overachiever Sails. Are they the achievements listed on the xbox app page of Sea of Thieve (i.e. 50 banana crates delivered on time (previously 1000 banana crates if I recall well)) or are they the legendary commendations ingame (i.e. Grade V: x amount of Chests of Sorrows turned in)?

I've been playing Sea of Thieves since Closed Beta, so I might actually be closer to achieving these than I think.

The old standard of the achievement is what needs to be reached to receive the sails? I.e. 1000 Captains chest for hoarders of captains gold? I already have the 360, don't know what my last tally was but i think i was close to the 1000 needed. Is there a way to check your stats?

Is rare ever going to fix the achievement description for "Hunter of Cured Captains". The descriptions says you need 700 captains, but the tier 5 commendation is 1,000 and the chevo doesnt pop until (and the % completion is based on) 1,000.

This might be frustrating for a handful of folks who unlocked those old achievements and also want the items to be as exclusive as possible, but with no way of tracking our old progress (e.g.: did I turn in 700 villainous skulls or 800 before the patch? can't know anymore, so I can't really "earn" the old achievement before the 14th even if I wanted to), it's the right way to handle this. Thank you!

The new requirement is 36% of the original. Imagine if PL was obtainable at level 18, or top athena after lvl 3 when you did all the work, not buying your way through any of it and suddenly they get an over achievement award. I'd be fine with it if they removed 'over' from the title and just handed them out as a consolation prize.

I agree with you, I'm just assuming there's gonna be at least one person who's upset about a cosmetic item they just found out exists five minutes beforehand, since there were also a very small amount of people upset about the achievements being made reasonable to accomplish. Can't please everyone.

Entirely just because a week ago, it was gonna be super rare, and now less rare. I think its the right move anyway. But Hopefully Rare is learning some lessons here about how much people care about the rewards, and they'll be more prepared in the future.

It’s definitely frustrating. Also the numbers were tracked for those old ones. If you looked at your achievements prior to the rebalance( or even now if you haven’t completed it) you can see what % you have finished. That’ll let you know how far you are. I was at 98% villainous skulls last week which means I was around 980/1000. All the numbers were being tracked except for the Athens related numbers. However after the change, you wouldn’t know what % you were at if you hadn’t looked in awhile. So I guess that could be confusing.

My commendation count for the captains chests is currently sitting at 205, but my achievement progress is 19%. Is the achievement currently just showing the old progress? I collected a few chests tonight and it didn’t seem to update.

Because they are just moving the goal posts arbitrarily and creating a lot of confusion. It's even worse because a number of commendations have not worked properly along the way. It's so bad that pretty much every person I play with now has this moment of doubt "wait did we get the comendation?!?!" after doing something that they think should count towards said commendation.

This latest "re balance" is just another example of Rare not really having a road map for how they wanted to handle the late-game in SoT. So instead they're seemingly just winging-it, and basing it off of random feedback and people that like grinding for the sake of grinding a little too much.

You have obviously not been paying attention. The vast, vast majority of gamers, including fans of Sea of Thieves, do not want an empty sandbox for which to do things "for fun." We need objectives. We need goals. There is a reason Sea of Thieves got abysmal reviews when it first came out. If you just want to do things for fun, why are you complaining about commendations? If you truly just wanted to do things for fun you wouldn't care at all about what they do with commendations.

Can those of us who have or will have unlocked one of the old ones by the 14th, get a matching FH or similar? I'm at ~3700GH chests, 3600skulls, so someone is an 'overachiever' with theoretically 1/10th isn't saying much, they're just starting out. It should apply to those who were near the original goals only tbh.

Love the chance you’ve given us all! Sadly, my Villainous Skulls achievement is not being awarded even though I did get the commendation. Will I need to earn some other achievement for the sails? Or is the commendation enough?

This completely negates the status of the sails which the reward was supposed to be for.

These were supposed to reward those that completed the achievements when they were extremely challenging to complete AS AN ATTEMPT TO REMEDY THE VETERAN PLAYERS WHOSE TIME AN EFFORT HAD BEEN ERASED AFTER THEY WERE REBALANCED.

Nope, completely negated any chance of an olive branch to those that had been wronged and instead gave them another slap in the face. Good initial intentions that were ruined by listening to the demands of entitled casuals..

This was the wrong move Rare and instead of being excited I personally am completely disappointed, again.

I don't care this will be downvoted to oblivion because what i'm saying is 100% accurate.

You're right but you'll find very few on this subreddit that agree with you because they didn't put in the time and wanted the exclusive sails as well, you see? The irony is the sails now have no meaning whatsoever. Those sails that showed you turned in 1000 villainous skulls in 5 months now display that you turned in 360 in 9 months, etc, etc. Completely meaningless at this point.

The majority of those veteran players are long gone from here and Rare already knows this, that's why they are appeasing the others.

I think that having a reward after accomplishing a long term goal is not a bad idea. It's even an incentive for some people to keep on playing and having this cool item to show off.

However, announcing thoses sails out of the blue with such a small time window to complete the achievements required to get this reward just doesn't feel right (at least for me).

In Sea of Thieves, the progression of your pirate/crew is mostly reflected in your cosmetics. I know it's not entirely true but it's not entirely false either.

Also, on dev updates videos, the only messages of urgency for completing tasks have (as I recall) always been about time limited events and their cosmetics unlocked with doubloons.

With those 2 points in mind I was quite suprised that those sails where announced and "already gone". It has upset some people (at least in my crew).

What I think is the problem is that visual cosmetics, if missed, can have a huge negative impact on dedicated players because they will forever miss this or that in a game they love and care about. Sure some will shrug it off, but some just won't.

Here's what I personally think about this topic.

I think giving players long term goals is a good idea

I think players achieving those goals should be rewarded

I think thoses rewards shouldn't be time limited

I think players having completed those goals before they were announced/created should get a bonus reward.

And now here's my suggestion.

Reward players with the overachiever sails when they get there with the achievement BUT for players already having met those requirements for the 14th of december give them a forever unique title, something along the line of "Overachieving Captain". That's the best middleground I could come up with between not gateing cosmetics and rewarding dedicated completionists.

And just so there's no misunderstanding, what I think and suggest isn't about bilge rat adventure or bigger updates, thoses systems are fine (in my opinion).